


Demon of the Bloody Mist

by ConnivingCatfish



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blood and Gore, Graphic Description, Origin Story, Origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25622467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConnivingCatfish/pseuds/ConnivingCatfish
Summary: Momochi Zabuza slaughters over 100 Ninja-hopefuls when he is only 5 years old. Karatachi Yagura watches as the entire Graduating Class ceases to exist. It is one of the bloodiest days in Kirigakure's history, and it will be remembered forever. Villages may become great through growth, but legacies are built through blood. A lot of blood.
Kudos: 6





	Demon of the Bloody Mist

Legend says that it only rains in Kiri when Kiri's ninja rain blood.

It rains often.

On Graduation Day, it is raining. When the Mizukage steps down into a massive muddy pit to begin the exam, the surrounding crowd falls silent. They are the men and women who were forged in this pit, shinobi and kunoichi who learned to kill before they ever thought about learning to live. Some are old, some are young; Some are mothers, some are sisters; Some are fathers, some are brothers.

The crowd has heard the whispers from other villages for years- 'How could they let their children do this to each other?'- 'Have they no compassion for their neighbors?'- 'They mustn't love their children at all!' Yet even on such a cold, bleak day, every single pair of eyes are open wide, brows are all pinched hard in grim anticipation, and the younger generations buzz with fresh memories, raw and untainted by time. They each think their child, their brother, their sister, their relative will live to become a ninja and bring pride to Kirigakure.

And every year for the past twenty years, half of them have been wrong.

"Bring out the Graduates," the Mizukage says. He is a quiet man, young for the position, but the scar on his face and the death in his eyes let no one question his capabilities. He was forged here in the same pit and bathed in the same blood as those present. He is one of them, and they revere him for it.

The Graduates arrive at the edge of the pit in a horde; Over 100 bright, teeming pairs of eyes slide down the bluff at varying speeds. Some approach the Mizukage quickly, eager to prove themselves and earn a spot on the Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shū (Seven Ninja Swordsman of Kiri), some tentative, having read enough on Karatachi Yagura to know that fear and respect go hand in hand, and still, others shake as their feet touch the soft bottom of the pit, fear hitting them with pinprick stabs like the rain above hits the back of their necks, forcing them forward. They line up in front of their leader, chests out, and eyes forward.

The rain thickens. The clouds deepen.

"Kirigakure no Sato is a village predicated on strength and loyalty," Yagura begins, launching into a full-blown address and ending with a partial eulogy for those who would die. These words would be the last words they ever heard.

The Graduates are soaked to the bone by the time Yagura's quiet voice is done being swallowed by the storm above. The Graduates form a tunnel for the Mizukage to stride through as he exits the pit. His sandals squelch in the muck below, and the crowd collectively envisions the future blood that will mix in with the water and recreate that same noise, but on a much louder, more violent scale. They cannot wait.

Yagura reaches the top lip of the pit, his gait light. He steps over the threshold easily, as if he's done it before- he has, they remember, never really forgetting. His clothing is still dry despite the pouring rain, and his slight figure is magnified by the explosions of light from lightning striking the volcanic mountain ranges behind him.

"Begin," Yagura whispers, and the sound of steel meeting steel, bone, cartilage, and muscle is buried in the pit by thunder booms and screams of pain, anguish, failure, and victory. Mud flies into the air and the pit itself seems to dance with the rain. The crowd is as silent as its Kage; Yagura stands with his arms crossed, purple eyes surveying the carnage below.

Kunai embed themselves into skulls and stomachs with snaps and whips, tanto blades drip with blood and rain. Screams are cut shorter than arms that rise to block attacks. Across the pit violence reigns, hearts shatter, and brains splatter into the mud below.

The rain keeps pouring. Thunder cracks overhead and the sky swirls with angry, bloated clouds. Blood mixes with the water that hits the pit and is sucked into the occasional Jutsu, dispersing a bloody mist into the tainted atmosphere. Chakra swirls everywhere; The very battlefield is coming alive.

And then it dies. The rain continues beating down, but everything else stops: The kunai are locked in the Graduate's hands, tantos are stuck in positions that beg for a quick strike, hand seals are frozen immediately. Lightning gives the Graduates a single moment to see what causes their feet to root themselves in the mud. And when the lightning dies, their fear rises.

In the center of the pit, it appears. It flashes a bloodred and then a chakra blue, but it is clearer than the skies around Kiri have ever been: the spirit of an Oni and its ugly, jagged toothed, white-eyed, two-horned head float atop a small boy. The boy wears no shoes, his pants are torn, and his shirt has holes large enough for a kunai to enter and never touch fabric. His sweltering rage matches the Oni's. He shouts with a voice that should have been high and nasally but is instead deep and hair-raising.

Yagura keeps silent even as quiet gasps flick through the surrounding crowd. He watches the boy intensely, and for a moment they lock eyes. The boy is shaking in fury, his chakra fluctuating wildly, much stronger than it should be for someone so young. It expands out, blanketing the area in its aura.

Then the violence began again.

A female Graduate, either the bravest of the lot or the stupidest of them all, flashes her tanto at the young boy, and her chakra flairs as she flexes her upper body and tightens her grip on her weapon. She shakes like a leaf in the wind but rears back and lets a horizontal slash loose full of power, adrenaline, and fear. For a moment, the rest of the Graduates are frozen. The kunoichi's swing is shoulder level, intending to bisect the boy's head at his jaw and remove his brain from its packaging. But then the unthinkable, the impossible happens.

He catches it with his fucking teeth.

Biting hard on the blade, the boy growls and braces his stomach muscles tight. He puts his left hand in the crook of the girl's right elbow joint and yanks downward, involuntarily making her pull him in close and render her tanto ineffective. His teeth disengage the blade and sink themselves into her exposed neck, where he holds her for a moment like a shark that just bit into its prey.

And then he yanks her arteries out.

The squelching of blood underneath the boy's bare feet as he twists and rips the girl's throat open reignites the Graduates. The spray of blood shakes the Graduates from their cloaks of fear, and they resume fighting. Only they don't turn on each other; They instead band together and, like the rain above them, flood the boy with violence.

He is nimble enough to sidestep flashing steel and strong enough to catch someone's arm mid-swing and break it at the elbow joint, but eventually, the blows start landing on him. He takes a kunai in his small back, has a sword slice a finger off his left hand, and is thrown halfway across the pit by a powerful kick.

He gets back up. His chakra flares and the Oni appears again, blue like the hottest fire imaginable. He charges the horde of Graduates still remaining, and they are caught off guard at the sudden offensive. He dashes through them, stealing a kunai from a boy whose throat he'd slit a split second later. He slashes here, stabs there, never letting himself get mobbed like before. He strafes through the groups of flesh and cuts whatever is vulnerable or not covered by armor.

In Kirigakure Academy, the students are taught seven ways to kill someone effectively, but the boy doesn't know these ways. Ho only knows how to suffer. He inflicts pain with each assault, and the number of Graduates capable of even standing, let alone fighting, dwindles. The boy is a true demon, laughing after each spray of blood and smiling when he knows he's taken a life.

Yagura continues to watch for another hour as the boy fells all Graduates in the pit. The last few left breathing try desperately to crawl away, but there is no escape. The boy slaughters them one by one.

One Graduate tries to breach the lip of the pit, which would result in instant termination, just to have a merciful death. As his fingers grip the incline of the pit, he is dragged by his shattered ankle to the center, where the young boy stands over the Graduate and carves his eyes out and sticks them in his mouth to muffle the screams. The small boy smiles with glee and sticks his stolen kunai through the center of the Graduate's throat, listening to him drown in his own blood.

When the last poor soul dies in the pit, the rain lightens but does not stop. It is lighter, fat droplets becoming senbon-like. The rain washes the boy's body of blood, sweat, and entrails. His wounds bleed slower now without the adrenaline of combat. He takes the kunai he's holding, the same one he used to carve the Graduate's eyes out with, and cuts his shirt off, revealing a prepubescent frame littered with fresh cuts and old scars. His malnutritioned body staggers toward Yagura, dragging itself by sheer force of will.

"Behold ninja of Kirigakure, your new comrade...," Yagura says as the boy stands next to him, Yagura's voice much louder now that the storm had passed. The people in the crowd hear him clearly, but no one cheers. No one even claps their hands. Their faces are those of soldiers. If the Mizukage, their Mizukage says that this boy, who moments before slaughtered their family members, is a ninja of Kirigakure, then by law, he is their comrade and their equal. They will respect him, and he will respect them.

"Hai Mizukage-sama!" The crowd roars in unison.

With a nod, Yagura dismisses them. Several ninja step down into the soft pit and begin to look for their loved ones, or what is left of them.

Yagura turns away and into the face of the boy next to him. "Who are you?" Yagura asks, surprised he hadn't heard of a child this powerful in his own village and a bit disturbed that he'd just killed an entire generation of shinobi.

"Momochi... Zabuza," the boy whispers. His entire body rises and falls with each breath.

"Hm. How old would you be, young shinobi?" Yagura asks again, this time brandishing a single Kirigakure headband from a box full of them.

Zabuza has cuts on each side of his mouth that curve up slightly, most likely from the tanto he bit into. His jaw is tight like a wolf's, creating a bloody, Godforsaken smile. He holds up his left palm and stretches his nubby little fingers out. He blinks when he notices his pinky is missing; He holds up his thumb on his other hand, the hate in his eyes burning despite his body shaking from exhaustion.

"Five. I see. We can have the finger fixed. It is hard to swing a sword without a full hand," Yagura notes blandly, his eyes on Zabuza but his thoughts on the fact that he now had 100 less ninja to use. Yagura gives the headband to the outstretched hands in front of him, and they take the cool, wet cloth and wrap it around Zabuza's small head, the Kiri emblem over his left ear pointing up slightly. It would have been comical were it not for the carnage behind him.

"Listen to me, Momochi Zabuza. You killed every single Graduate from this year's class. Prove to me you are worth the lives you took, and I will push you into the ANBU, and then Suikazan Fuguki will evaluate you for a role in the Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shū. It is a great honor to even be considered. Do you understand?" Yagura intones, looking away from the boy and back to the bodies he'd left in his wake.

"Hai," Zabuza says, his small voice still heavy with the blood he'd spilled.

"Do you have a place to live, Momochi Zabuza?"

"No."

Yagura's left eyebrow shoots up. "Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern. You are my subordinate. I am your Kage. Address me as your superior or do not speak."

Zabuza's fists ball up, and the hole where his pinkie should be starts to bleed. "No, Mizukage-sama," he chokes out. His teeth remain bared; Little jagged, chipped, yellowed teeth with bloodstains remain as Zabuza's defining feature.

"Good," Yagura says, his features relaxing again. "This village is predicated on strength and loyalty, as I've said. Should I ever question either of those from you, I will kill you. Should you ever question either of those from me, I will kill you. You are a tool at my disposal, and your job is to be the most effective tool I use to accomplish a task. And every tool has a place it can easily be found. Follow me to the Western Barracks, your new home." Yagura turns on his heel and marches west.

And it's at this exact moment when Momochi Zabuza decides the Yondaime Mizukage, Karatachi Yagura, must die.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Just a fun little origin story I've always wanted for someone to expand upon. I might do Pakura or another obscure, cool character next, just for fun. Also, the next chapter of Red Steam is close! If you haven't read it, please check it out! Thanks.


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